These discouragements stained the reputation of Morning for hospitality, but they helped to keep his secret, and proved effective against everybody except a special reporter of a San Francisco journal, who, disguised as a Papago Indian, journeyed to Waterspout, and remained there several days. He might have made a longer stay, but a Papago squaw, hearing of his presence, sought him with a view to connubial felicity. The reporter would have faced death for his journal, but he drew the line at matrimony and fled. He did not gain access to mine or mill while there, but he picked up considerable information, the publication of which might have proved damaging to Morning’s plans. It happened that the sagacious manager of the great daily, before ordering publication, frankly communicated with Morning—who happened to be in San Francisco—and, being persuaded by that gentleman that the public interest would be subserved by silence concerning the great gold mine in the Santa Catalinas, the notes of the reporter were not sent to the composing room. At last all was in readiness. The men whose duties ended with the construction of mills, furnaces, railroad, and buildings, were sent with the teams to Tucson and paid off. All idle, dissatisfied, and unsatisfactory men were discharged, and their places supplied with others. The best mining and milling machinery obtainable was in place and ready to run. Supplies of all kinds, sufficient for months, were in the storehouses, five crosscuts, twenty feet apart, had been run to within one foot of the ledge, and the doors of the treasure caverns were ready to open, when the owner of the mine directed that all the men assemble on the little plaza at Waterspout in front of the company’s offices.